Annette Barcelo
The spontaneity of Barcelo’s strokes and figuration resists classification and canonization. She insists that her painterly expression should defy categorization, as her approach to the female body is characterized by functionality and transience, closely linked to the processes of birth and the self-image of a woman defying patriarchy of the 1980s art world in Switzerland.
In Barcelo’s work, we witness the emergence of a unique universe populated by almost mystical figures. She constructed a bestiary inhabited by eerie creatures, witch priestesses, chimeras, and various animal forms. These figures seem to hover between life and death, possessing a certain power over mortality and rebirth. At times, they can be interpreted as substitutes for human figures and interactions, but the female figure remains at the core of her visual vocabulary and is represented in nearly every work.
Barcelo was born in Basel, where she lives and works. She attended the Schule für Gestaltung Basel. For more than five decades she has worked continuously, often in series and in different techniques such as painting, drawing and graphic prints, on her specific visual language, which explores the connections of the manifold areas of life and mythologies. Since the 1980s, the artist’s works have been exhibited at Galerie Anne de Villepoix in Paris, Galerie Mäder in Basel, and the Aargauer Kunsthaus in Aarau, among others.
